Awwwwww.

This is cute. Got to watch all the way through.

I will not become a chick lit addict.

I came into some money recently and decided to go on a shopping spree at Barnes & Noble. (Translation - I got a $10 gift card for my birthday, which in this day and age enables me to purchase approximately 77% of a book.) What to get? I went against my usual M.O., which is to scan the classics, berate myself for the fact that I haven't read THIS, or THIS EITHER, and therefore am a pathetic excuse for a human being, hyperventilate because there are so many books I'm supposed to read that I haven't read yet, and grab whichever book strikes me as the most meaningful contribution to literature. Instead, I took the less snobby route. I'd heard of the movie version of P.S. I Love You, coming out next month, but hadn't known it was based on a book. I only knew it was about a woman whose dying husband arranges for her to receive letters from him after he's gone. I saw it and went for it, expecting it to be the kind of Nicholas Sparks-type schmaltz I hate, which makes a nice little movie but otherwise should never have been committed to paper. (I loved the movie A Walk to Remember, but I threw the book across the room when I finished it. IF I finished it.)

I fell madly in love with this book and every character in it.

For the last week my life has revolved around finding time to read it. It's one of those stories that gets into your head and just saturates you, changing the way you look at the things that are right in front of you, making you realize just how easily this or something similar could happen to you. It has me thinking nonstop about love and about making the most of it while you have it, it has made me so grateful to have love in my life. To BE alive. And it has me thinking about what kind of writer I might want to be someday, when I actually get around to writing something. (How about right now—the author is 26. Twenty-six! I have so much life to catch up on; I've accomplished zip since I graduated.) Is it okay to wind up writing popular fiction? Should I be at all concerned about being "literary"? Or is all that matters the idea of being able to connect with someone you've never met? To be able to make a stranger cry with what you've tapped out on a keyboard in the middle of the night, sitting alone with your own thoughts, emotions, and fears and trying to validate them the only way you know how? 'Cause let me tell you, this book had me sobbing. I want everyone to read it, I want everyone to see the movie. Even though the trailer tells me they've butchered it, I still really, really want to like it. I'm even ready to like Gerard Butler, whose oh-so-manly facial hair and bellowing about "SPARTA!!!" left me yawning, because he plays Gerry, and Gerry is a man to swoon for if ever there was one.

That's me gushing. I could go on, too, but it's almost time to put an end to this hellish work week. I haven't posted in a while, because I haven't been this bored at work in a while. But tonight is hockey date night!! Thank God for hockey and a welcome relief from feeling like such a girl.